Answer to state judge's race expected next week

Winner of Fourth Judicial District race to be certified

Updated 9:22 pm, Thursday, December 1, 2016

Albany

The winner of the Fourth Judicial District contest between Schenectady County Family Court Judge Mark Powers and Clinton County Family Court Judge Timothy Lawliss will likely be officially declared sometime after noon Thursday.

That's when the state Board of Elections commissioners are scheduled to meet in Albany to the certify the results, according to John Conklin, a spokesman for the agency.

He said in an email Thursday that the agency was still awaiting the final vote tally for Clinton, Essex and Saratoga counties, three of the 11 counties in the district.

After election night results and before nearly 32,000 absentee ballots were counted, Powers led by 1,415 votes.

Neither Lawliss, a Republican, or Powers, a Democrat, returned a call Thursday seeking comment.

In Lawliss' home turf of Clinton County, he had Thursday unofficially amassed 19,941 votes to Powers' 10,383, according to Greg Campbell, the Republican commissioner.

In Schenectady County, where Powers lives, elections commissioners said Thursday that he had outpointed Lawliss, 40,115 to 21,524, results which were certified last week. The winner will succeed retiring Appellate Justice John Lahtinen, who reached the mandatory retirement age of 70.

Powers, 61, of Schenectady, was elected to Family Court in 2001 and has been an acting Supreme Court justice since 2004.

Lawliss, 56, of Peru, has been a Family Court judge since 1999 and an acting Supreme Court justice since 2003, his campaign website says. Lawliss was a Clinton County legislator before his election to the bench in 1999, has been in private practice in New York, was an adjunct lecturer at SUNY and worked in computer systems design in Boston from 1982 to 1987.